German Military History

The Last Battle is the latest of the excellent histories of World War I that Peter Hart has produced. This book is an account of the last year of World War I on the Western Front with an emphasis on the final Allied campaign known now as The 100 Days. My copy is a pre-publication review copy so some of this can change. The facts: there are 395 pages of text divided into 12 chronological chapters. Like his earlier work this is an excellently written history that does not indulge in the blame games so many histories of World War I engage in. Peter Hart presents a narrative account of … More after the Jump…

An often overlooked aspect of World War II is the war as seen from the enemy side. There have been a plethora of books published about the snail’s eye view of the war from the Allied side from intimate unit histories like “Band of Brothers” to collections of oral histories. There is an absolute dearth of such works on the side of the Axis powers in English but also in their native tongue at least as far as German goes to my knowledge. The facts: the book is 320 pages of text split between two books and 13 chapters with an introduction and postscript for each book. D-Day Through German … More after the Jump…

Since 2014 there have been a whole slew of books released dealing with World War I in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of the war. This volume is one of them. In The Great War Peter Hart has produced a book that should have been written half a century ago at a minimum. The stats: the book is 476 pages of text separated into 16 chronologically arranged thematic chapters with maps, notes, and a preface. This book does what few other books I have read about manage. That is, it examines World War I combat from the perspective of what was achievable at the time instead of criticizing commanders for … More after the Jump…

The Battlefields of the First World War: The Unseen Panoramas of the Western Front by Peter Barton is one of the most visually stunning books about WWI I have ever read. This work is more than just a history of British participation on the Western Front. It makes use of officially produced trench panoramas to illuminate conditions of trench warfare better than almost any other pictorial record of WWI I have run across. The book itself is 358 pages in length with a bibliography, picture credits, list of further reading, and index. In addition, and one of the things that makes this book outstanding it includes two CD-ROMs that contain … More after the Jump…

David Glantz’s To the Gates of Stalingrad is the first of a three book trilogy that catalogs the intense German-Soviet battle for Stalingrad in 1942-43. The book details the failed Soviet offensive toward Kharkov in spring 1942, the German spring offensive (Fall Blau, or Case Blue), and the German 6th Army advance to Stalingrad. The book is in line with Glantz’s other works that attempt to prove his common thesis: that the Eastern Front was the decisive theater of the World War II. The book represents Glantz’s unmatched ability to chronicle the battles for the Eastern Front from strategic, all the way to the tactical level. One paragraph might detail … More after the Jump…

This is an annual tradition at Battles and Book Reviews. This year is the 73rd anniversary of the Allied Landings at Normandy in France during WWII. Just a reminder for everyone to stop today and take a moment to reflect on the events that happened 68 years ago today on the shores of Normandy in France. This year, the text of General Dwight Eisenhower’s message to the troops of the Allied invasion force the morning of the invasion. Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force: You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are … More after the Jump…

[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the author and/or publisher. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own] There are numerous biographies of German officers and soldiers from World War II and The Devil’s General: The Life of Hyazinth Graf von Strachwitz, “The Panzer Graf” by Raymond Bagdonas is yet another. I cannot quite make up my mind if this is a good book or not. I lean towards yes but something is lacking to make this a truly great biography. The numbers; there are 338 pages of text making up an introduction, 23 chronological chapters and 6 appendices. … More after the Jump…

This is an annual tradition at Battles and Book Reviews. This year is the 72nd anniversary of the Allied Landings at Normandy in France during WWII. Just a reminder for everyone to stop today and take a moment to reflect on the events that happened 68 years ago today on the shores of Normandy in France. This is the day that the Allies opened up the long-awaited Second Front against Hitler’s Germany. The invasion took place along almost 50 miles of French coast using five named invasion beaches. From south to north the beaches were named Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. The first days objectives … More after the Jump…

[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the author and/or publisher. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own] There have been thousands if not hundreds of thousands of books written about World War II and Germany since 1945. There have even been social histories written in the seemingly never ending attempts to fathom how a nation like Germany supported Hitler and his murderous regime. The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939-1945 seeks to explain not the how, but the what. As in what was it like under the Nazis and what did the average German see and feel. … More after the Jump…

The Battle of the River Plate was the first naval battle of World War II and the only battle of World War II to take place in South America or its waters. The Graf Spee was one of three Deutschland Class “pocket battleships” built by the Germans in the interwar period to get around treaty restrictions imposed after World War I. The three ships were the Deutschland, Admiral Scheer, and Admiral Graf Spee. All three ships were to be destroyed during the course of the war. The ship was designate to act as a commerce raider and was at sea when the war began. After getting new orders she began … More after the Jump…

Just a reminder for everyone to stop today and take a moment to reflect on the events that happened 68 years ago today on the shores of Normandy in France. This is the day that the Allies opened up the long-awaited Second Front against Hitler’s Germany. The invasion took place along almost 50 miles of French coast using five named invasion beaches. From south to north the beaches were named Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. The first days objectives were not reached over most of the front and in many places it would take weeks to reach objectives that were supposed to have been taken … More after the Jump…

Throughout 1944 the German armies on the Eastern Front had been pushed westward across Poland and into Germany proper. During the winter of 1944-1945 the front had stabilized roughly along the river Oder and inside historically German territory. In front of Berlin three Russian Fronts (1st & 2nd Byelorussian plus 21st Ukrainian) faced two greatly understrength German Army Groups (Army Group Vistula & Army Group Center). A Russian Front and German Army Group are roughly synonymous units within the army structure although at this point in the war German Army Groups were pretty much army groups in name only often being the size of reinforced Corps or even divisions due … More after the Jump…

From the opening months of the World War I, Flanders was the decisive sector for the British Army. It was in an around the medieval Belgian town of Ypres that the original BEF had decimated themselves fending off German attacks from October to December, 1914. Ypres and the salient surrounding it was where the British would see the hardest and most prolonged fighting of all the places where the British would fight in World War I. The Battle of Messines Ridge fought from 7-14 June, 1914 was not really a separate battle at all but rather the opening phase of what would come to be known variously as the Third … More after the Jump…

[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the author. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own] The Bombers and the Bombed: Allied Air War Over Europe 1940-1945 is one of those books that is going to end up a standard work for a long time to come. It is the single most comprehensive history of the Allied bombing of Germany and occupied Europe during WWII that I have seen since the strategic bombing survey published by the US government in the immediate post-war years. I have a review copy of the book so the page counts may be a … More after the Jump…

Just a reminder for everyone to stop today and take a moment to reflect on the events that happened 68 years ago today on the shores of Normandy in France. This is the day that the Allies opened up the long-awaited Second Front against Hitler’s Germany. The invasion took place along almost 50 miles of French coast using five named invasion beaches. From south to north the beaches were named Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. The first days objectives were not reached over most of the front and in many places it would take weeks to reach objectives that were supposed to have been taken … More after the Jump…